Passengers on United Airlines and Cathay Pacific traveling out of Heathrow Airport will begin testing a new ‘COVID passport’ that in the future will check if someone has been vaccinated before they travel.
The technology is called CommonPass and will let people travel without being quarantined if they download an app to their phone which contains a negative COVID test or a vaccine certificate.
“The phone software is a digital health pass which can hold a certified COVID-19 test status or show someone has been vaccinated in future in a way designed to satisfy various governments’ different regulations,” reports the Daily Mail.
Overseen by the Commons Project Foundation, part of the World Economic Forum, the pass works by having flyers upload their COVID test or vaccination certificate to the app which then generates a QR code that can be scanned by airline staff and border officials.
“Without the ability to trust COVID-19 tests – and eventually vaccine records – across international borders, many countries will feel compelled to retain full travel bans and mandatory quarantines for as long as the pandemic persists,” said Dr Bradley Perkins, chief medical officer of The Commons Project.